I've posted about my network before, in all it's intricacies. I've gone with Linksys products across the board, because while most vendors are “wifi certified” and all use the same standards, the chances of making D-Link APs play nice with Linksys Routers, or one of the other brands out there are pretty slim.

My apartment has the DSL connection in it, and I have a Linksys WRT54G as the main gateway/router/access point for our apartment. My Laptop, my Media Player, my Xbox, my Desktop and my Packet8 VOIP ATA all plug into it. There's also an ethernet cable running down through the floor to Seb's room, where it goes into a Linksys BEFSR41 router but it's only being used as a switch. From there it's plugged into his computer and into another ethernet cable that goes through the wall, outside, into a conduit, under the car park, and up into Derek's apartment in the other building. HE has it connected to another AP so he can roam wirelessly in his apartment with his laptop. Going the other way, we skip 64 and I have a WAP54G in 63. They connect to that AP wirelessly and also the people in 62. 61 is at the very edge of coverage, so it's not reliable enough to say “you're on the network, chip in for the bill”

The Linksys WRT54G is an extremely hackable device. There are a few people/groups out there hacking the firware to make it do all kinds of crazy things. One such group is Sveasoft, and for $20 a year, you can download their firmwares and do with em what you will. The (current) Sveasoft firmware for the WRT54G is called Talisman, and lets you do all kinds of cool things that the stock firmware wont let you.

For instance, with Talisman, you can enable telnet and connect to your router and get a shell prompt. You can make it into a hotspot solution if that's your bag, but most importantly, it allows you to crank up the power to the wireless radios, and use WPA encryption over WDS. There are FCC rules in the US and equivalent rules in the EU determining what power you can put out, with regards to signal coverage and interference. These are the same rules that make it “illegal” to put aftermarket higher-gain antennas on a little wireless device like this.

I don't know if we have any such rules and regulations down here, but even so, do I really care?? HELL NO. I upgraded my WRT54G all the way to 251mw (from 28mw stock) and also have a pair of 9dBi antennas on it as well. You can probably pick up my wireless signal all the way down to 4-Way Stop now! I decided to download their “Freya” firmware for the WAP54G as well last night, which would allow me to modify thepower output of that radio as well. I read through a whole ton of message board posts first and it seems that a lot of people were ending up with dead access points after the upgrade. I was nervous, but I gave it a shot anyway.

...And killed my brand new WAP54G.

It was late so I left it til today and picked up where I left off. The AP was unresponsive, the power light was on solid, the ACT light was off and the LINK light was off. I plugged in a cat5 cable from my laptop to it and the LINK light came on. HUh? maybe it wasnt dead? I used SuperScan and did a scan on the subnet, thinking that it was going to be 192.168.1.245, it's factory default IP address, but it showed up as 192.168.1.2, the address I assigned to it before the upgrade. I pinged it and it responded, but there was nothing going on. As a last resort, before opening up the case and shorting the flash memory chip with a screwdriver, I dropped down to a command prompt and tried to TFTP the factory-original firmware to the device. It said complete in 3 seconds, which was positive, but didn't mean anything, because TFTP doesnt rely on any acknolwedgement in transfer. Then the ACT light came on and the continuous ping I had running in another window started receiving responses, so I hit the address with a web browser and the setup page came up! I was thinking of changing my online name to Lazarus at this point.

Since I figured I could bring it back from the dead again if I pranged it, I re-flashed the WAP54G with the Freya firmware, and this time it worked. I cranked the power up to 84mw and re-configured it as an Access Point Repeater. I took it next door awhile ago and installed it, so they should be back up and running, and with that power output increase, I should have coverage into 61 reliably, but if not, I now have this Liksys WRE54G “Range Expander” I can plug in in their apt to bring them up to snuff.

I wouldn't recommend upgrading the firmware of your router or access point to a mere mortal, but if you have a network nerd handy and want to give it a try, start with Seattle Wireless or Sveasoft to learn more about what you can do with your devices.